Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/356

 332 cup, also gold-mounted—were rendered more precious by the addition of a morsel of the True Cross, enclosed in the crucifix, and Ivan declared them worthy of the giver. At the very last moment Possevino decided to withdraw a picture of the Holy Family, in which a perfectly nude figure of St. John the Baptist might have offended eyes accustomed to a more modest style of art.

The Jesuit employed tactics which had already served him well elsewhere, in the most skilful manner, and made the great object of a common faith the foundation of his speech, though he still contrived to keep it in the background. He was supple and insinuating, eloquent and crafty, all at once, and proved himself worthy of his mission. But his task was a hard one. The answer to the pacific overtures of the Roman envoy is a curious monument of Muscovite diplomacy. Six men of the Court were deputed to reply to the Legate, and given special instructions, so that each might treat one particular point of the whole problem—the League against the Turks, the state of the negotiations already entered into with Batory, the relations with Rome, etc. But when this first work was accomplished, the Tsar's Chancery began it all over again, in a fresh series of inquiries, superadded to the first, and which were followed by several more. In the end there was a total of six-and-thirty documents, which Possevino had to peruse. At the head of each was inscribed an invocation of the Holy Trinity, and a complete list of the Sovereign's titles, and this whole collection was only to serve as the basis of a controversy destined to drag on for weeks and weeks, diversified with personal discussions, exchanges of notes, perpetual interventions on the part of the Tsar himself, and misunderstandings as to meanings, such as arise between people who do not speak the same language—a Tower of Babel in a Labyrinth.

From the very outset, besides, it was clear that the two parties were not agreed as to the starting-point of the negotiations. The Legate represented Batory as having been led by the Papal influence to consent to large concessions, and requested Ivan to take some similar step on his side. Now, the very fact of the Pope's intervention made the Tsar exceedingly grasping. Instead of coming forward, he went backward, withdrew what he had previously offered, and demanded that the siege of Pskov should be raised at once, and a Polish embassy sent to him. Was it not for that he had applied to the Pope? Batory's letter challenging him to fight a duel was not calculated to inspire him with more conciliatory feelings. At first he affected to speak of it more in sorrow than in anger, and when Possevino asked to be